Not to mention not being a hardcase and openly dismissive about people who, if you look carefully enough, are doing you a favour. We're on your side to the point that well established gods mostly have less devout followers than your game...

What sidestepper, and the rest of us, are saying is true, and if you think about it with an open mind you will come to realize this. It's also pretty mild, and some of it can be adressed in less drastic ways. But if you dismiss people who are willing to do the insane and do what we've been doing for a year and give us a very uninformed "reasons why you suck" speech - you put yourself into a position where once you realize that we are in fact pretty fair, benevolent and right about what we are saying, and do something about it it's gonna look like "we won". And we aren't trying to "win" anything and it's not about us not understanding the logic behind the original design decision, it's us, the most masochistic and inventive of us, trying to tell you that it's not working as intended.

I'm sure you are familiar with the story of the genious architec who designed a neighbourhood with green areas, but didn't make any pathways. He waited for a few months for people to form natural paths and then paved them, and everyone was happy. I'm not asking you to give us as much weight as the award winning guy, but I can guarantee that a decent compromise would be very beneficial to your game. I don't care if you openly acknowledge when I'm right about something - I read it off changelogs. This is one such thing - the problem is there, it's a big one, and it's there wheter we talk about it, not talk about it or even if you acknowledge it or not. Except if you don't even acknowledge it it's still going to be there, and it's hurting your game more than it's hurting anything else.

EDIT: Don't reply to this! Sleep on it, PM people in private if you don't understand us, heck, if it's not inappropriate - I suggest a skype conference with no guarantees on your part, but a chance to explain the whole deal without textwalls. I'd offer to come to south africa so you can all punch me in the face first if it ment you'd give what were saying a chance afterwards. Noone's asking for any credit for anything, and noone's trying to take anything from you. Please make an effort to understand this at least.

EDI2: And the skype suggestion is legit - because I don't want to make any more "this is just wrong" vids for you tube. I want to promte this thing, not otherwise, and you guys hearing about stuff is all that really matters.

As a thought, maybe a compromise is allowing the ability to pay 10x shop prices to get an item without having to go into dungeons to find it. Once found at least once you can go commission your tinker to scum for it and you now have it available in your backpack.

dislekcia wrote:It's not the power or usefulness of an item that makes you keep it in your locker when you don't use it, it's the joy you took in overcoming the obstacles to acquiring it

Here's the part where you lose me - at a certain point, for the vast majority of lockerable items, the "joy" of reacquiring an item consists of rolling a Goblin Tinker, entering the Tower, and repeatedly hitting the Restart button until you find the item you want to locker.

I don't even use the locker, because I don't like playing with preps, and I've still been repeatedly annoyed by its limitations. Every so often I get a neat idea about a particular item combo that I'd like to try out, but then I realize that getting the item in my locker is going to take a good 10+ minutes of scumming, and then I get annoyed and abandon the idea. And this is coming from someone who likes scumming!

I mean, I totally get that you don't want people to be cavalier about vicious trophies and the Fabulous Treasure and whatnot (although I think Lujo might be the only one who actually uses the Treasure). If you want to relocker Namtar's Ward, having to beat him again, totally fine with me. But having to grind for a while just to relocker, say, the Bloody Sigil just so I can test out some weird theory - there is no joy in that. If all I'm doing to put an item in my locker is spending gold (or translocating) at a shop, why not just let me do that straight from the kingdom screen?

q 3 wrote:although I think Lujo might be the only one who actually uses the Treasure

I'm using it for FUN. It's never really worth it. I'd never use it if I had to do thief gold over and over to get it. What you say is totaly right - why have us waste actual play time, when grinding 500 gold to relocker something would equate to actually playing the game AND guarantee you find the item you were looking for? And if we could allow relockerable items for a 1000 or even 2000 per item and then pay 500 whenever we want them relockered, that would be a much less frustrating gold sink than the one we have now.

I mean, people are ready to grind 100 000 gold for the 9th locker slot. Heck, in many ways the game actually starts after you've ground enough gold to purchase the 7th or eight one - you can finally afford to locker stuff you otherwise have to compare to all the things nothing really compares to in power or time needed to relocker. And I'm not even a munchkin, I just know uninteresting runs can be skipped if I have some of this stuff lockered, and for the other stuff I know the time it will cost me if I take them out to locker something else.

The reaction that you'd get from anyone sensible, with the current system is - grind how much for another locker slot? Oh, well, I suppose the slots were ment to contain DS, NW, Codex, Cauldron, Trisword and CB. Noone in their right mind is going to give up on those once they get them - just like stuff that getting nerfed: "I earned, it's mine! My own! My preciouss!". Joy that they got them? Sure... now try getting them to locker anything else in any circumstances... I'm one of the few guys who went for two whole playthroughs with barely touching the trisword, and you have to hear this from me -.- And I can clear vicious dungeons in half the time than most people, yet can't even imagine bringing myself to having to do that every time I feel like having a vicious reward handy...

EDIT: Hell, if the trisword actually gets nerfed like it should, there'll be people out for blood, looking to inflict righteous whining justice upon whoevers responsible for that. Why exactly do you think this IS so? My name will be brought up, and I'll be the boogeyman, even though I went out of my way several times to explain that this unhealthy state is caused by you guys being too rigid about the decisions related to the lockers and the gods. How would you feel if all the people complaining about sensible adjustments were actually throwing abuse at you instead of me? Would you ban every one of them if some vet doesn't tank that for you, or maybe think about that you were not as right as you thought you were?

Devs, there was no need to insult Sidestepper. He's an incredibly dedicated fan, and all he wants is for this game to do as well as possible. Then you compared him to a pirate for no reason. Honestly, his contributions to the game have been exceedingly valuable.

Sidestepper wrote:I openly admit to hacking my game to get all 9 locker slots (hee-hee according to the PMs I got from dislekcia this was causing some seriously weird error reports, sorry about that and thanks for being so chill about it). Even at the full 9 slots, locker space is a serious deterrent to trying new things and has pretty much removed incentive to experiment with things like the Cauldron or the new Orb of Zot. Part of it is having to scum for the new item, and part of it is the knowledge that I will have to scum again when the experiment is over and I want to restore my old item. I cannot imagine playing with 4-6 slots, which is what most people dpo.

I'm sorry, but if you've already removed any context to items and lockering by hacking, how is your opinion about item gain pain relevant? It's the same as people who pirate tons of games: They hardly play any of them because every game is equally meaningless due to a lack of acquisition plan. You're experiencing the same thing with items: Trying to find an item or uncover one is meaningless to you because you've removed any triumph you could have experienced in the process of finding/unlocking that item.

... Plus there are already mechanisms in the game to give you easier access to items: Every Silver challenge will grant you that item on completion. Backpack items remain available when restarting a run, so just keep restarting if you want to mess with a strategy but don't want to "sacrifice" a locker slot.

Most of you have items that sit in your locker and don't DO anything at all. I'm inclined to give items a decay rate to cycle un-played items out of the locker more often, just to illustrate that point. It's not the power or usefulness of an item that makes you keep it in your locker when you don't use it, it's the joy you took in overcoming the obstacles to acquiring it - if we were to make all items available without any acquisition discomfort, we'd be sabotaging the exact value that you're enjoying most about the items you keep! And you can't say otherwise, because you wouldn't be keeping items you don't use if that wasn't the case.

I know things coming up again and again is frustrating, and we can be a bit of a nagging lot, and this is a fairly deeply held thing, but this sort of post is really not helpful to anyone... and I think this from Sidestepper's first post is just about the most reasonable thing in the world:

[quote=Sidestepper]I thought I would bring this up one last time. With the recent drama the timing might be bad, so let me make it clear that this isn't about making demands or rage-quitting or feeling an entitlement to the creative process, this is me being a good beta tester and reporting an issue that interferes with the enjoyment of the game.[/quote]

Incidentally, unlocking items is very satisfying, searching for them in order to try something isn't. Silver Challenges aren't great for recovering items, given that most of them are pretty hard. The backpack is good though its niche is more fiddling with novelty subdungeon items than trying out a strategy properly. Of the items in my locker, one is race-specific, one's badge-specific (Balanced Dagger) and I'm pretty sure all of the others get regularish use. The exception being the cauldron, which is there because I keep thinking about testing it and never get round to it.

For the record, I agree with Sidestepper, though I'd also say it's now much less bad than it was before you folk introduced a load of mitigating things.

Additionally, I suppose, if we had something like a stacking 1,000+1,000/ or 1,000x2/item cost to be able to summon stuff to the locker at will (even if THAT summoning costs more gold, making it a gold sink rather than a time sink to relocker items), that'd be a much smoother, more personalised and more valuable goldsink than the current upgrade-bank, add-a-locker-slot, rinse repeat business. Make it more exorbitant than that (say 5,000+5,000 gold/item) and post-game only or something, and it'd still be great. If anything, that'd give players a more unique long-term kingdom state than currently exists, complementing the short-term locker system.

I'd just like to drop by and point out a few things I think are worth mentioning.

While Dislekcia's comparison to piracy was unfit (in that it missed the context and reasoning behind Sidestepper's hacking), I think it's pretty safe to assume that he did not at all mean to compare Sidestepper to a thief or attack him in any way. The effect of piracy he mentioned is real, and if you consider that he ignored/missed the fact that Sidestepper did experience standard locker functionality before resorting to hacking, then the comparison is very much relevant.That is to say, Dislekcia's comment was misplaced in that regard, but at the same time I think Sidestepper misinterpreted the intentions behind it.

Now, as for the issue itself, I think I understand in part where the devs are coming from with their stubbornness. When designing games you have to consider that sometimes players don't really know/understand what they want and they often lack knowledge of the big picture and design intentions behind game elements, so sometimes you have to be stubborn about how things are handled.However, in this particular case, after having read what the community has said, and after deriving as much as I could of the design intentions from Dislekcia's posts on the subject, I think it sounds like there's a dissonance between how the devs think players are experiencing locker limitations, and how the players are actually experiencing them.At the very least, that seems to be the case for the more advanced players. I wouldn't doubt that the locker is working as intended (and in a very positive way) for the less vocal majority of the playerbase, but for those who stick around for the late-game content, I'd say there have been enough comments on how it's an outright unfun and detracting mechanic to warrant giving them the benefit of the doubt.

To summarize,Sidestepper: You probably misjudged Dislekcia's tone and intentions, don't be so mad at him.Dislekcia: Changes to the locker system is something the vets have been clamoring for for quite a while. I do realize you gave us backpacks to try and answer that, but I think everyone made it pretty clear that didn't change much. I really do think this is a case where you should consider reevaluating what all this player feedback means.

That which is not dead may eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.

I typed my response to dislecksia off the cuff. I did this because I wanted it to be a genuine response rather than a calculated answer. I think that was the proper course of action, but the result was that some of my wordings were clumsy.

I'm not mad at dislecksia. I was for about five minutes, but I'm over it. If I were to met him in real life, I'd buy him a beer. He helped create one of my favorite games of all time, and that's pretty cool.

That being said, getting that kind of response has a chilling effect on feedback. I get that he wasn't literally calling me a thief and I get that from the context that he might have had cause to assume that I never legitimately played the game, but, I am also a year-long veteran and having my experiences sneeringly dismissed like that without any benefit of the doubt ruffled my feathers. I'm not some random script kiddie, and you should know that by now. It doesn't help that both of his posts in this thread were reactions to the thread, rather than responses to it. No one asked for a Real Money Auction House, and no one asked for an all items for free system, and so his posts felt more like angry venting rather than a real engagement. But mostly, the threat to spitefully do the exact opposite of what the player feedback is suggesting seriously makes me want to not give any more feedback. The message it sends is "We are not interested in feedback and will punish you if we get it."

Hey, I get that development is a stressful thing, and sometimes player feedback can feel like an attempt to appropriate your intellectual property, but for real, that is not what is going on here. Like I said several times in the OP, I (and several others, as it turned out) I am trying to report a design issue that is just not working out the way it was probably intended to. You are free to take it or leave it, but please don't shoot the messenger.

So that is that, and I hope that discussion turns back to the game itself rather than metaforum drama.